Sunday, January 31, 2010

Not too much happening lately...

It seems to me that the cycling projects in my area have now dried up for the time being, which is disappointing because it leaves me nothing to comment about. The last thing to happen in my area was the shared path at Bayswater Station, which is now much better to ride through than before. I know they are still building new bridges on the Merri Creek Trail and the Werribee River Trail, and parts of the Capital City Trail and the Main Yarra Trail are being reconstructed, which is good. I believe the Capital City Trail needs to be minimum 3 metres wide, sealed, and fully grade separated at all major roads. Construction of the new section of the Mullum Mullum Creek Trail seems to have stalled. I now use NearMap to check on the progress of cycling infrastructure construction, as it is such high quality and so up to date (never more than about 1-2 months old, and sometimes as much as 2 weeks behind real time). I hope to post more entries on this blog in the future, but I just thought I would pop something on here to keep things moving along, although very slowly.

3 comments:

Anonymous
said...

I had a look at the Mullum extension today and the trail has been sealed from Park Rd to the first bridge. When I was there a council worker was filling the edges of the trail and I asked him about the progress. He said things were slow as the area got flooded a while back and that cut off access and the local residents had forbidden the council use of their land to complete the project.

If you're interested in Melbourne's bike paths more generally, OpenStreetMap could really do with your expertise, mapping and labelling all the bike paths, based on aerial photos, but also surveying them in person.

If you look at opencyclemap.org (eg tinyurl.com/yl8m89u ) you'll see there's good, but far from complete coverage. The URL I posted shows there is a piece missing of the Stud Road Trail.

I've been adding a lot of trails, labelling them, adding junctions etc, but it's often hard to know exactly what sections of bike path are included in each trail etc. You'd know a lot about this stuff.

To make changes, you go to openstreetmap.org, register, and click the "edit" button. There's a bit to learn about the system, but if you're interested, drop me a line and I'll give you a few tips.

Steve, it may interest you to know I am already a dedicated Melbourne OpenStreetMapper. I sometimes edit the bike network but I never like to stay on one mindset for what I want to map and I like to mix it up alot. The NearMap imagery has been a godsend.

Chris, thanks for the update for the Mullum Mullum Creek Trail. There must be some stubborn residents there. It's not like it's a huge freeway. It's a measly little bike path!

Who runs this blog?

I am a male who lives and breathes all things Melbourne, with a general interest in transport. I am an ideas man who wishes to gain more public interest in transport issues which sometimes get overlooked.